China has concluded three-day military drills east and south-west of Taiwan, the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army of China informed on Monday.
In a statement published on its WeChat account, the Eastern Theater Command said that the exercises were held between May 6-8 both at sea and in the airspace east and south-west of Taiwan, Sputnik News Agency reported.
The purpose of the military drills was to increase the combat capability of various branches of the Chinese armed forces in joint operations, according to the release.
Taiwan has complained for the past two years about frequent Chinese military activity nearby it, mostly concentrated in the southern and southwestern part of the island's air defence identification zone, or ADIZ.
Taiwan's air force scrambled on Friday to warn away 18 Chinese aircraft that entered its air defence zone, and reported further incursions on Saturday and Sunday, though with fewer aircraft.
The People's Liberation Army's Eastern Theatre Command said in a statement that naval and air force assets carried out drills from Friday to Sunday to the east and southwest of Taiwan.
The exercises were to "further test and improve the joint combat capability of multiple services and arms", it added, without elaborating.
Taiwan's Defence Ministry said the equipment involved included bombers, fighters and anti-submarine aircraft.
A total of 18 Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on Friday, according to Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense.
The planes included six J-11 fighter jets, six J-16 fighter jets, two Xi’an H-6 bombers, two KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft, one Shaanxi Y-8 anti-submarine warfare plane, and one Shaanxi Y-8 electronic warfare aircraft, CNA reported.
The Y-8 ASW and the two H-6 bombers flew along the southwest and the southeast corners of Taiwan’s ADIZ, while the other aircraft entered from the southwest, where most of the incursions have occurred since the military started publishing them in September, 2020.
Taiwan’s Air Force sent aircraft, issued radio warnings, and deployed air defense missile systems to track the Chinese planes. The highest number of intrusions on a single day in 2022 so far occurred on Jan. 23, when the military spotted 39 People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) aircraft.
Earlier, the Liaoning aircraft carrier abttle group of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) had reportedly been practicing intensively over the past few days in the Philippine Sea to the east of the island of Taiwan and south of Japan, a location that experts said is a vital place to stop potential external interference in event of a reunification-by-force operation in the Taiwan Straits.
With the carrier group to Taiwan's east, the PLA also reportedly dispatched an increased number of different types of warplanes and additional warships from the Chinese mainland west of the island of Taiwan, effectively surrounding and enclosing the island under the watch of US and Japanese aircraft carriers.
After reporting a PLA Navy flotilla, consisting of the aircraft carrier Liaoning, a Type 055 large destroyer, three Type 052D destroyers, a Type 052C destroyer, a Type 054A frigate and a Type 901 comprehensive supply ship, sailed from the East China Sea through the Miyako Strait to the Pacific Ocean on May 2, Japan's Ministry of Defense Joint Staff released monitoring reports for five consecutive days from Wednesday to Sunday.
It said the carrier group conducted intensive, cross-day-and-night carrier-based aircraft training with live munitions in the Philippine Sea east of the island of Taiwan and south of Japan from Tuesday to Saturday.
The Liaoning carrier group was sailing slowly closer to the island of Taiwan as its drills went on, the Japanese releases show.
For decades, Communist-ruled China has vowed to bring Taiwan, a democratic island with de facto independence that is a U.S. partner, under its control. While there is no sign that war is imminent, President Xi Jinping of China has adopted a more aggressive foreign policy than his predecessors, and U.S. officials fear he might invade Taiwan to seal his legacy.
The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 obligates the U.S. government to provide equipment of a defensive nature to Taiwan. Every administration since then has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on the question of military intervention — meaning they have not explicitly said whether the U.S. military would defend Taiwan if China attacked.
